McCAFFERY: Series with Devils hits close to home for JVR

VOORHEES, N.J. --- They were two interested fans at a youth hockey game, one a father of a player, the other an older brother of one of his teammates.

It could have been Quebec or Voorhees or British Columbia, for the scene would have been identical, standard, innocent. Friends and neighbors, fathers and brothers, a hockey community. This time, it happened to be North-Central New Jersey. One of the players was named van Riemsdyk, brother of the Flyers' James. Another, Brodeur, son of the Devils' Martin.

That's how interwoven it all seems for James van Riemsdyk, and his parents, and his friends, and his emotions, and his family's GPS as the Flyers and Devils prepare for a second-round Stanley Cup playoff series. That's why he was excited to be on the ice Saturday at the Skate Zone, on a line with Danny Briere and Jakub Voracek, healthier and livelier than he'd been in weeks, ready for a full-service effort beginning today at the Wells Fargo Center.

To him, this is not another series against another goalie in another spring. This is about being able to return to the rinks around Middletown Township, proud to have solved not just one of the greatest goalies ever to mask himself for work, but to have beaten that guy standing next to him, cheering on the same amateur team.

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"Yeah, I would see him there, at the rink and stuff like that," van Riemsdyk was saying after practice. "He's a great guy. But now? It's game on."

After missing 22 games following a broken foot, van Riemsdyk resurfaced with the Flyers in Game 5 of their series against the Penguins. By then, the Flyers, who'd built a 3-0 series lead, were in enough control to work the big, 22-year-old left wing back in at a useful pace, essentially to ready him for what would be next. That would be the Devils ... as if a life-long New Jersey resident needed the incentive-boost.

"I have had a lot of buddies send me texts, saying they would be at the games, either in Philly or New Jersey," van Riemsdyk said. "It's nice for me that the series is so local, and that there are a lot of people I can share this run with."

That's what van Riemsdyk expects --- a long run, not just a way for his friends to get together without exhausting more than a tank of gas for any of the games. He expects that because Martin Brodeur was not the only spectator at that youth match who had shown that he could be at his best in an NHL postseason.

"James van Riemsdyk was a terrific player for us last year in the playoffs, no question about that," Peter Laviolette said. "He was a dominating guy with his speed and his size and the way he packed the net offensively. He had a terrific playoffs."

In 11 playoff games last spring, van Riemsdyk scored seven goals. In 2010, as the Flyers reached the Stanley Cup Finals, he scored three goals, though none in Round 1 against the Devils, a team he often followed, though hardly rooted for, while growing up.

"I was a Rangers fan -- but not any more," he said. "That's how it was in my area. You could pick or choose -- Yankees or Mets, Rangers or Devils. Just a few towns down it was mostly Flyers fans. But when we were young, we would go to Devils games and to games at the Garden. It was always fun."

It had to be fun for any young hockey fan in Northern Jersey to watch Brodeur in a heart of one of the best goaltending careers in NHL history. But Brodeur is about to turn 40 and van Riemsdyk is about to charge into his own prime.

"I think it's a pretty cool thing," van Riemsdyk said. "But I will be out there doing my job and he will be out there doing his."

And if they want to talk about it later, they will know where to meet.